Call me crazy, but I think many of the songs on "Load" are far superior to 'St Anger'. But again, Het's voice hurts the Load record...
Well, it does kind of come down to the voice with them, and for what it's worth, I thought he let go of some of the "bad" sounds he makes on St. Anger. Also, just to explain a little, one of the things I like about St. Anger is that it really reflects what they were going through at the time, James' rehab and all that. Sooooo....for my money the poor production actually works well with the "concept," in that it is raw and kind of naked. Maybe it's not Metallica's place to make artistic statements, but again, it worked for me. There are some strangely insightful lyrics on the record too...or at the very least honest lyrics: "Not only do I not know the answer, I don't even know what the question is....", "I'll die if I let go, control is love, love is control..."
Stuff like that was really shocking to me, especially since James has always been such an intentional badass. And really, I understand that is just the kind of stuff that put the average metalhead off about the record. But, after years of singing about fast cars and the earlier usual metal stuff, I thought it very cool that they stepped up and did a record that was kind of about growing up, facing reality, and being honest. Sure, it's touchy feely in a way, but it just worked for me.
And one last note on the production, I thought it was at least somewhat similar to the way, say, and early Motorhead record would sound, and so was an interesting experiment, snare sound aside - not even I will defend that.
Really my point with this post was not that it is amazing, but that it is not the big, obvious loser that everyone refers to it as. It ain't
that bad....
Master of Puppets it most definately is not, but if nothing else, if they kept making that record over and over so to speak, I'm fairly sure there would be a HUGE outcry on the Internet about how lame and repetitive they had become. As an example, the new Maiden album is brilliant in my book, and while a lot of people think so as well, a lot have not embraced it (both views being fine), but I think largely because Maiden never steps too far off their normal path.
It's a double edged sword is all....and I think that Metallica has a HUGE well of bad feelings to overcome with the metal crowd with every release. There's a pretty good chance that it's gonna "suck," before anybody even hears it. For what it's worth, I was a small town kid when MOP came out and nobody I knew liked it or recognized it for what it was.....and not to get on my high horse here, but I seem to be all alone again with St. Anger. Fine. Not ranting, I swear. It just makes me feel nostalgic is all...ha. And I'm not saying the two records compare in anyway. My point is that it was fashionable to dislike Metallica in my school because metal was still very much a fringe thing, meant only for stoners and burnouts. Now it's fashionable to dislike them again (albeit for very different reasons)....and well, it's just all so confusing.
